Retribution_ The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 - Max Hastings [190]
Being depth-charged was a terrifying experience for all those who experienced it, hearing detonations unleashed by warships which might spend hours groping for their unseen victim. The Japanese, however, never addressed the critical issue, that of throwing charges in geometrically schemed patterns. An American boat would seek refuge far beneath the surface, if possible in a friendly thermal which deflected sonar signals, with all non-essential equipment closed down to reduce the submarine’s sound profile. Without air-conditioners, the atmosphere in the hull grew relentlessly more foul. Perspiration poured down men’s bodies. Under attack, more than anything Pete Galantin found himself craving a cold shower.
A pattern of charges sent dull thuds echoing through the boat: brr-oomp, brr-oomp, brr-oomp. The radioman of Angelfish, Artie Akers, recorded that during ten war patrols he was depth-charged forty times, albeit sometimes briefly. When obliged to stay deep for long periods, crews scattered air-purifying powder on bunks, a feeble means of mitigating the stench. Vice-Admiral Charles Lockwood535, submarine commander at Pearl, was enraged by a government official’s indiscretion to the press in 1943, asserting that American boats cared nothing for Japanese depth-charging, because the enemy always used shallow settings, which exploded above their quarry. Thereafter, claimed Lockwood, the Japanese began to detonate charges deeper, and sank more boats.
Under depth-charging, which often continued for hours, submariners envisaged with hideous clarity the implosion of their frail hull, the crushing of the thin steel that held out the ocean. The father of a newly joined Halibut officer had once visited the boat at San Francisco, and observed sagely that he thought “submarine duty would be a good experience for a young man.” A few weeks later, as chlorine gas leaked through the boat during a depth-charge attack, the young man wryly repeated his parent’s words to the control room. Pete Galantin wrote: “Heads ached536, lungs burned, and eyes smarted from the hours trapped in stagnant, foul air.” Men sniffed for the scent of burning insulation in the vital electrical control cubicle, sought to guard against leaks of oil or air from the hull which might provide deadly clues for the enemy. When a depth charge exploded nearby, the shock rendered a boat’s interior a shambles of falling cork, loose gear, sprung pipes, with oil or water spurting forth until leaks could be staunched.
If a charge came closer than that, there was simply a devastating crash as the hull burst open, the sea surged in, and the crew experienced a few seconds of horror before oblivion overtook them. The crews of stricken submarines were seldom granted an opportunity to escape. When they were, some declined to take it. In a legendary 1943 episode, Cmdr. John Cromwell refused to quit his boat, Sculpin, lying fatally damaged on the surface. A second officer, Ensign Fiedler, sat down at the wardroom table and began to lay out a solitaire hand. In a manner a Japanese would have respected, Cromwell told shipmates: “I can’t go with you. I know too much.” As the boat foundered, forty-two others from Sculpin were picked up by an enemy destroyer. Most of those men survived the war as prisoners, but others were less fortunate. Four submariners who swam from a sinking boat to reach the shore at Robaloto in the Philippines were summarily executed by their Japanese captors.
As always in war, luck was a decisive factor in submariners’ survival. William Soczek served nine Pacific